Spatial Diversity

This course explores spatial diversity, a powerful technique used in both RF and optical wireless communication (OWC) to combat signal fading, improve link reliability, and enhance performance under turbulent or scattering environments.

• Fundamentals of diversity techniques in communication systems
• Spatial vs. frequency vs. time diversity concepts
• Transmit diversity, receive diversity, and MIMO principles
• Spatial diversity in RF, FSO, and Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) links
• Effects of turbulence, pointing errors, and fading on diversity gain
• Repetition coding, Space–Time Block Codes (STBC), and Orthogonal STBC
• Combining techniques: Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC), Selection Combining (SC), and Equal Gain Combining (EGC)
• Correlation among spatial channels and antenna/receiver placement strategies
• Performance evaluation under atmospheric and underwater turbulence models
• Practical deployment scenarios in RF, FSO, and hybrid RF/FSO systems

• Wireless and optical communication engineers working on reliability and link robustness
• RF, FSO, and OWC system designers focusing on fading mitigation techniques
• Researchers and graduate students in telecommunications and photonics
• Aerospace, defense, and satellite communication engineers dealing with turbulent channels
• IoT and smart-city network planners seeking resilient connectivity solutions
• Signal processing engineers interested in MIMO and diversity algorithms
• Academics and instructors teaching wireless or optical communication courses
• Professionals involved in next-generation 5G/6G and hybrid communication systems